Roundup: Media's Take

E.J. Dionne Jr.: David Souter vs. the Constitutional Originalists

[E.J. Dionne Jr. writes a column for the Washington Post.] It should become the philosophical shot heard 'round the country. In a remarkable speech that received far too little attention, former Supreme Court justice David Souter took direct aim at the conservatives' favorite theory of judging. Souter's verdict: It "has only a tenuous connection to reality." At issue is "originalism," an approach to reading the Constitution whose seeming

George F. Will: The Danger of a Government with Unlimited Power

[George F. Will writes a column for the Washington Post.] Today, as it has been for a century, American politics is an argument between two Princetonians -- James Madison, Class of 1771, and Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879. Madison was the most profound thinker among the Founders. Wilson, avatar of "progressivism," was the first president critical of the nation's founding. Barack Obama's Wilsonian agenda reflects its namesake's rejection of limited government.

David S. Broder: Is President Obama's Carter Moment Nearing?

[David S. Broder is a columnist for the Washington Post.] "This is the worst," a Democratic friend exclaimed over the phone on Tuesday, the first day back at work after the Memorial Day weekend. I knew without asking what he meant -- the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico that dominated television coverage and was into its second month with no quick solution in sight. No, I told him. It's not yet the worst.... I was thinking back to when another Democ

James Woolsey: Parallels Between Present-Day Iran and Nazi Germany

[R. James Woolsey is the chairman of Woolsey Partners and a former director of Central Intelligence.] In 1933, a totalitarian regime came to power in Germany with the consent of at least a substantial minority of the German people. Its Nazi ideology was rooted in fanatic racism and resentment over recent history. Hitler and those around him preached that it was the destiny of the German race to dominate Europe and exterminate the Jews. One of the Nazis’ most bitter enemies from the

Robert Scheer: Treat Palestinians Like Jews

[Robert Scheer, a contributing editor to The Nation, is editor of Truthdig.com and author of The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (Twelve) and Playing President (Akashic Books).] ...The first time I encountered that bewildering criticism of Jews who dare to be morally consistent—despite that being our historical obligation—was when I was an editor at Ramparts and nearly bankrupted the magazine in attempting to cover the Six-Day War, during

Mickey Edwards: The Various Types of Constitutionalism

[Mickey Edwards spent 16 years in Congress and 16 years teaching at Harvard and Princeton. He is a director of The Constitution Project and wrote Reclaiming Conservatism.] Here's the good news. According to a recent article in The Hill, the Constitution has become a runaway best-seller. The Government Printing Office has sold nearly 9,000 copies in the past eight months and that's not counting the copies provided to constituents by members of Congress (who collectively dispense wi

John Sides: A Rebuttal to Mark Lilla on the Origins of the Tea Party

[John Sides is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at George Washington University.]Mark Lilla’s essay, “The Tea Party Jacobins,” seeks to explain the origins of the Tea Party. I do not disagree the part of his explanation that emphasizes the most proximate causes — particularly the financial collapse, bailout, and health care reform. Nor do I dis

Martin Kettle: Germany, Too Weak Yet Too Strong

Talleyrand once said that the problem with Russia is that it is always both too weak and too strong at the same time. After the upheavals in the eurozone over the Greek bailout and now the resignation of the country's president over military policy, is the same now true of Germany? Germany's position as primus inter pares in both the eurozone and the European Union always underscores her economic and political strength. The bailout for the Greeks boiled down to whether the Germans,

Richard Irvine: Remember 1947 and the Exodus Ship

[Richard Irvine teaches a course entitled "The Battle for Palestine" at Queen's University Belfast.] No one can accuse history of not having a sense of irony. Sixty-three years ago, in July 1947, a passenger ship destined for Palestine and named the Exodus was stopped and boarded by the British navy. The ship was crowded with Holocaust survivors determined to make a new life for themselves in British-controlled Palestine. The British, facing Zionist terrorism and trying to

Louis René Beres: America Must Come to Terms with a New Vulnerability

[Louis René Beres is a professor of international law at Purdue University. He lectures and publishes widely on nuclear strategy and nuclear war. In Israel, Dr. Beres was chair of Project Daniel, commissioned to assess the threat to the nation of Israel from other states in the Middle East.] All talk about "victory" and "defeat" in our current wars may actually be beside the point. Whatever happens in Iraq and Afghanistan, the vulnerability of American cities to

Ronen Bergman: Siege Fatigue and the Flotilla Mistake

[Mr. Bergman, a senior military and political analyst for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, is the author of "The Secret War With Iran" (Free Press, 2008).] Monday's botched commando raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla has proven disastrous for Israel. World public opinion has united in condemning the Jewish state and the U.N. Security Council has already demanded an inquiry. Closer to home, the strategic alliance that Israel had painstakingly forged with Turkey is in tatter

Daniel Foster: Should We Nuke the BP Oil Well?

[Daniel Foster is news editor of National Review Online.] It was September of 1966, and gas was gushing uncontrollably from the wells in the Bukhara province of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. But the Reds, at the height of their industrial might, had a novel solution. They drilled nearly four miles into the sand and rock of the Kyzyl Kum Desert, and lowered a 30-kiloton nuclear warhead — more than half-again as large as “Little Boy,” the crude uranium bomb dropped over Hiroshi

William Choong: Is North Korea's Kim Jong-il a madman or a genius?

[William Choong joined the Strategic Defence Studies Centre in March 2005.] Some years ago, I visited an observatory near the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. From there, one could see a massive statue of Kim Il-sung, the late North Korean leader. His right hand was stretched southward, as if seeking to entice southerners to go over to his communist utopia. Nearby stood low concrete buildings of simple construction. According to a tour guide, they

Joel Kotkin: To See the Future of America's Working Classes, Look at England

[Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in Febuary, 2010.] ...In Britain alcoholism among the disaffected youth has reached epidemic proportions. Britain now suffers among the highest rates of alcohol consumption in the advanced industrial world, and unlike in most countries,

Lee Harris: The Tea Party vs. the Intellectuals

[Lee Harris is the author of The Next American Civil War: The Populist Revolt Against the Liberal Elite (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). His previous books include The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West (Basic, 2007) and Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History (Free Press, 2004).] Intellectual critics of the Tea Party movement most often attack it for its lack of ideas, especially new ideas — and these critics have a point. But the point they are making

William A. Galston: The Case Against Keynes (With Some Questions for Krugman, Too)

[William A. Galston holds the Ezra Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, where he serves as a Senior Fellow.] As President Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission gets set to convene, the Greek budget disaster has triggered the predictable flood of cautionary notes about how we’re spending too much and heading toward a debt crisis. Should these concerns illuminate the commission’s work—or are they merely alarmist? Paul Krugman harbors no

Simon Jenkins: Let Cameron hasten the end of our absurd Afghan war

[Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. He writes for the Guardian and the Sunday Times, as well as broadcasting for the BBC.] Senior ministers are meeting at Chequers today for an urgent review of policy on Afghanistan. This is good news. President Obama staged a similar review on taking office and came within an inch of withdrawing. Perhaps David Cameron could go that extra inch. It is idle to pretend that Britain's 2006 expedition to bring Helmand under the contro

Matthew Dickinson: Obama Wonders: Will You Still Love Me at 64?

[Matthew Dickinson is a professor of political science at Middlebury College.] It’s been a rough presidency for Obama so far. His promise to change the tone of Washington politics proved woefully naïve in the face of a deeply polarized Congress and the echo-chamber effect of an increasingly ideologically fragmented news media. He inherited a financial bailout program and an economic recession that has stubbornly lingered despite (or because of, according to critics) Obama’s backing

James Ridgeway: Obama's "Revelations" and the Oil Industry's Slimy History

[James Ridgeway is a senior correspondent at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here.] "What's been made clear from this disaster is that for years the oil and gas industry has leveraged such power that they have effectively been allowed to regulate themselves," President Obama said last week in his press conference on the BP oil spill. "I was wrong," he declared, "in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-cas

Philip Weiss: The U.S.S. Liberty and the Culture of Impunity

[Philip Weiss runs the website Mondoweiss.] The attack on the USS Liberty is one of the great enigmas of US-Israel relations. On June 8, 1967, in the middle of the Six-Day War, Israeli planes attacked an American spy ship, the Liberty, that was in international waters off the coast of Egypt, listening in on secret communications. The attacks appeared to be deliberate, involving numerous passes on a clearly-marked American boat, strafing and napalming. The attack killed 34 Am